Prepping for Steam[Cross-posted from the devblog here--follow link for better formatting and light-on-dark style.]

Cogmind is coming to Steam this month! This was inevitable, of course, if a little later than planned as I waited to at least partially get over the serious injury which has been keeping me from making progress for months now. Anyway, here we are, with contracts signed, a store page already in the open, and a Steam build more or less done and waiting for October 16th.

It's certainly been an interesting process filled with new challenges, plus internal preparations for Steam doesn't seem to be the kind of thing people write much about, so I've decided to share my experience here.

Cogmind Released on Steam[Cross-posted from the devblog here--follow link for better formatting and light-on-dark style.]

It's finally happened. After over four years and more than 8,000 hours of work, Cogmind has just been released on Steam :D

"Released" but Early Access. Some say that as soon as you release on Steam, EA or not, that's it--you only really get one launch and the "full release" won't make as big a splash later. That's fine, since Cogmind is a very complete experience and it's time for anyone who's been waiting for this opportunity to jump in.

There are of course a lot of people who don't have much faith in Early Access games, but as long as they're interested in the concept of Cogmind I don't think it'll be too hard to win them over while we spend the coming months adding optional features and content, especially considering the amount of development already allocated to ensuring maximum polish.

Break out the fireworks! (Or missiles, depending on how you look at them )

Thanks to everyone who's helped make this possible! Cogmind has come way beyond what it would have been without as much support as everyone's provided over the years, be it financial, spreading the word, or offering feedback and suggestions. A few months back I shared a lengthy rundown of features that didn't have to happen but have certainly made Cogmind better for it, features that you all made possible.

Alpha SupportersI've sent out emails to alpha supporters who bought back when a Steam key was promised as part of those tiers. So check your inboxes (and spam, just in case) and email me at [email protected] if you were supposed to receive a key but did not. Note that my response time might be a little slower than usual due to a much higher volume of activity around release time.

Those of you migrating from DRM-free to Steam can import your settings and metadata as usual. After installing via Steam, open the Steam-installed local files and copy over your old Cogmind /user/ directory into the new one. That's it. It will automatically update from then on for subsequent versions.

A little Beta 3 was put out last week to coincide with this Steam launch, so anyone not on Steam will want to update manually. See the announcement for notes on that.

For those of you who bought ages ago just to support development and are only now being reminded you own the game but never registered your copy, therefore your name doesn't appear in the supporters list (or more importantly the art gallery if you bought that early), go back to your original download email and use the linked form to register. There are still quite a few unclaimed items in the gallery, mostly because a lot of you probably didn't notice the form link (just a couple quick fields to fill out, otherwise I don't know what name you want to use!). After some time on Steam I'm going to have to reallocate remaining unclaimed items to other players!

Purchase OptionsAlthough Cogmind is now available on Steam, it will also always be available for sale from my website as well, and the DRM-free version will continue to receive the same updates (though technically the two versions are slightly different packages).

In the near term, however, as has been indicated on the buy page for a little while now, direct purchases will NOT include a Steam key.

A big part of the reason is to encourage purchases from Steam to help push up the overall review score. Everyone playing Cogmind on Steam please take some time to leave reviews! They're vital for encouraging more sales, and more sales is how we're going to get more features!

Further down the line this key policy could change, but it depends on a lot of factors and we'll have to see how things play out. So if you haven't bought Cogmind yet and are interested in doing so to play on Steam, buy from Steam. For a DRM-free non-Steam version instead buy direct here.

GOG I'm not sure about, because despite proactively expressing interest in Cogmind they haven't responded to my later emails, so for now I've decided to shelve that route.

CoverageThere hasn't yet been a whole lot of advance press coverage about Cogmind's Steam release, partially because I requested that most influencers hold off on their coverage until on or after the actual release date, though I'm still not sure what kind of reception we'll see since Cogmind is pretty niche, after all. Some pre-release happenings:

Purely coincidentally, leading up to this release PC Gamer published an article full of praise for Cogmind, and despite his short time with it the author did a great job of understanding and conveying the essence of the game.

Well-known roguelike let's player Aavak has started a

which has been pretty popular.

Two Credits has a quick summary of the launch news, but otherwise there's not much out there just yet.

Gonna have to rely on word of mouth and continued updates to get attention! :D

If you have any favorite LPers/streamers you'd like to see try Cogmind, or a reviewer who's opinion you'd like to read, let them know! I've already written to several, but I can't possibly find them all (and I imagine lots probably won't notice my email anyway, but if some of their fans let them know that can be even more powerful than me self-promoting my way into their inbox).

Congrats on the release! Based on the comments, many people have already played it

Does that mean you won't be reporting exact financial numbers? Of course, it's possible to do in a "careful" way. For example, (at least as a percentage) how many people got it now that it is Steam compared to before.

Congrats on the release! Based on the comments, many people have already played it

For sure, since I released the alpha a couple years ago and thousands bought that to help keep development going! Only now can be publicly see everyone's logged hours (so many lost over the past two years xD).

Does that mean you won't be reporting exact financial numbers? Of course, it's possible to do in a "careful" way. For example, (at least as a percentage) how many people got it now that it is Steam compared to before.

Yeah I'm not sure yet what I can and can't say, but I've never seen anyone give out numbers because presumably that's against the contract. I can do something similar to what others devs have done before, though. As you know I'm always interested in doing writeups that help other devs.

Glad that even those who bought direct from Steam are also leaving nice reviews for Cogmind, 100% positive so far and already approaching the "Very Positive" threshold on day 3, but still need more reviews!

Does that mean you won't be reporting exact financial numbers? Of course, it's possible to do in a "careful" way. For example, (at least as a percentage) how many people got it now that it is Steam compared to before.

Yeah I'm not sure yet what I can and can't say, but I've never seen anyone give out numbers because presumably that's against the contract. I can do something similar to what others devs have done before, though. As you know I'm always interested in doing writeups that help other devs.

Yes, I've read quite a few of your posts. I'm always interested in not necessarily just numbers but how things went along the development of the game.Actually, I've seen one dev (here on TIG and twitter) giving exact numbers and others more along the lines of "made over X amount". Of coures, for "numbers" we can always follow steamspy.

Glad that even those who bought direct from Steam are also leaving nice reviews for Cogmind, 100% positive so far and already approaching the "Very Positive" threshold on day 3, but still need more reviews!

So, you're shooting for Overwhelmingly positive, eh? At this rate it's more like a matter of time rather than if. Oh, do you know the requirement for that?

Hm, I wonder if exact numbers are okay. I don't really know, just noticed that lots of people avoid them. But that could be mostly just because they don't want to talk numbers themselves. Anyway, yeah I'm interested in documenting so maybe there'll be some kind of post. Still lots to do here in the near term though...

Yeah it's like 95% of 500 reviews or something. Either way, the important part is the 500, which is quite a lot. I mean 50 isn't too hard with a launch boost, but reaching 10 times that is going to take some time as you trudge along the long tail.

Hm, I wonder if exact numbers are okay. I don't really know, just noticed that lots of people avoid them. But that could be mostly just because they don't want to talk numbers themselves. Anyway, yeah I'm interested in documenting so maybe there'll be some kind of post. Still lots to do here in the near term though...

I'll look over the Steam NDA before releasing my game (soon-ish), but my guess is that if you want to be strict they'd prefer not to have anything released. If everyone released their numbers then people would find out that Steam is making $h!tload$ of money. Or it might be one those things to cover their ends legally in case there are some ramifications of someone relesing numbers. Then they can say that they weren't allowed to and could discredit the numbers.

One common way of releasing sale figures seems to be mentioning number of copies sold which tends to include other stores as well. If the game is released on desktops, then the majority is (obviously) Steam sales but console and/or mobile figures could be included for some. I wonder if those situations are also be a violation of Steam NDA.

Yeah it's like 95% of 500 reviews or something. Either way, the important part is the 500, which is quite a lot. I mean 50 isn't too hard with a launch boost, but reaching 10 times that is going to take some time as you trudge along the long tail.

Oh, I see. Yeah, I know that small percantage of people tend to write reviews so to get to 500 will need a lot of players. The positive reviews like help but I wonder how many people wait out the EA and only get the game after full release. Maybe you could use that motivation to finish faster.

Looks like you got your first negative review. It's in Korean but the translation I checked give a very "cryptic" meaning. Maybe it has to do with the game so you might be able to interpret it.

Quote

장점이라곤 특이하고 깔끔한 그래픽이랑 타격감뿐솔직히 타격감 하나는 로그라이크중 단연 원탑그래서?

TRANSLATION SITE #1A unique and neat graphics and a blowFrankly, one of the logs is a hitSo?

TRANSLATION SITE #2unusual and that benefits pitchers neat graphics.And I feel most wontap logsSo?

Looks like you got your first negative review. It's in Korean but the translation I checked give a very "cryptic" meaning. Maybe it has to do with the game so you might be able to interpret it.

Quote

장점이라곤 특이하고 깔끔한 그래픽이랑 타격감뿐솔직히 타격감 하나는 로그라이크중 단연 원탑그래서?

TRANSLATION SITE #1A unique and neat graphics and a blowFrankly, one of the logs is a hitSo?

TRANSLATION SITE #2unusual and that benefits pitchers neat graphics.And I feel most wontap logsSo?

It's unfortunate but he is just a troll reviewer trying to be funny or something. None of his reviews are honest/serious.His review is actually positive because the correct translation should go as thiis:"Postive points: unusual , clean graphics and good feel (aka game juiciness) are the only positive points.Honestly for a roguelike, the game feel is amongst the best.so what?"

One common way of releasing sale figures seems to be mentioning number of copies sold which tends to include other stores as well. If the game is released on desktops, then the majority is (obviously) Steam sales but console and/or mobile figures could be included for some. I wonder if those situations are also be a violation of Steam NDA.

Yeah that's what I've seen everyone doing over the years, and I'm sure that's fine (even some major indies do it).